The social media platform X has provoked major backlash after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to change images of females by taking off their clothing.
Numerous examples have surfaced where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to ban nudification tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "face a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been criticised for permitting users to produce pictures and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the creation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "showing images of people in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
